Regarding the Authoritarian Playbook

Introduction

This 6:34 video of Roger Stone supporting open attacks on the election makes it explicit that MAGA plans to steal the the 2024 election if DJT loses. This is the reality of American radical right authoritarianism. Its scope and depth has grown far, far beyond just Trump. The elites running the MAGA wealth and power movement are fueled mostly by lies, slanders, bullshit, crackpottery, rage, hate and what appears to be non-trivial, actual belief in some of their own lies, slanders, bullshit and crackpottery. American authoritarianism has deep roots and a lot of infrastructure in place. The Trump cadre of authoritarian elites** are planning to make their run at kleptocratic dictatorship with Trump as a callous, kleptocratic, above-the-law dictator for life.

** The Trump cadre of elites are the kleptocratic autocrats among MAGA elites. The kleptocratic plutocrats and kleptocratic Christian nationalist theocrats are also in play. A lot of elite authoritarians appear to be sympathetic two or all three strains. The extent of coordination between the three strains of American radical right authoritarianism is unclear to me, but significant coordination exists. Perplexity:

While the extent of explicit coordination is difficult to quantify, there are clear overlapping interests and mutually reinforcing actions between these groups that pose a threat to American democracy and civil liberties.

Stone: “They use the election system to harass you when you’re in office,

but this is about an election. We gotta fight it out on a state-to-state basis.”

☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️

The Authoritarian Playbook

A nonpartisan, anti-authoritarianism group, Protect Democracy has posted the Authoritarian Playbook as a guide for journalists to spot and understand the tactics authoritarians use to gain power against a democracy. 

Protect Democracy describes itself as “a cross-ideological nonprofit group dedicated to defeating the authoritarian threat, building more resilient democratic institutions, and protecting our freedom and liberal democracy.” The group relies on experts, advocates, litigation, legislative and communications strategies, technology, research, and analysis in its work. The point is to make a stand in defense of free and fair elections, the rule of law, fact-based debate, and a better democracy.

The group describes its playbook like this:

Authoritarian takeovers rarely happen overnight. Today’s authoritarian playbook is a process that happens piecemeal and is hard to distinguish from normal political jockeying.

Our report, The Authoritarian Playbook: How reporters can contextualize and cover authoritarian threats as distinct from politics-as-usual outlines the seven fundamental tactics used by aspiring authoritarians, describes examples from in and outside the United States, and offers a framework journalists can use to differentiate between politics-as-usual and something more dangerous to democracy.

Before the 1990s, authoritarian leaders bent on upending democracy typically came to power forcefully and swiftly, often by means of a military coup d’etat. The moment democracy ceased to exist could be time-stamped and reported on with a block headline.

Yet for at least the last 30 years, the threats to democracy have evolved. Today, democracy more often dies gradually, as the institutional, legal, and political constraints on authoritarian leaders are chipped away, one by one. This has happened, or is happening, in countries including Russia, Venezuela, Hungary, the Philippines, Poland, Nicaragua, India, Turkey — and the United States.

By using “salami tactics,” slicing away at democracy a sliver at a time, modern authoritarians still cement themselves in power, but they do so incrementally and gradually. Sometimes their actions are deliberate and calculated, but sometimes they are opportunistic, myopic, or even bumbling. There is no longer a singular bright line that countries cross between democracy and authoritarianism. But the outcome is still the same.

This presents a unique challenge for journalists, who are committed to providing the public much-needed information and context about important news. Contemporary democratic breakdowns are far more difficult to identify because — in snapshots — they can mimic the typical acts of political jockeying to gain advantage that are routine even in healthy democracies. But especially as these acts accumulate and intensify, hard-nosed politics can cross a line into authoritarian threats. Unfortunately, there is no simple bright-line answer or mechanical test to distinguish between the two.

At the same time, because authoritarianism worldwide tends to follow clear and consistent patterns, we can use these patterns to separate the signal from the noise. This basic framework — the authoritarian playbook — can help isolate clear and immediate dangers to democracy from partisan outrage, political hyperbole, and sensational spin.

The press has a foundational role to play in how democratic systems hold leaders accountable, and doing so requires clarity about the gravity and implications of their actions. Understanding and recognizing the authoritarian playbook as a whole can help journalists not only decide what to cover as threats to democracy, but can also help enrich and contextualize coverage about how the individual components of the playbook fit together. Americans suspect that their democracy is at risk. But by identifying and connecting individual threats to democracy to the global whole, reporting can help inform voters about more than just what is happening — it can tell them what the news means.

Covering the authoritarian danger requires that the press do two things: understand the interlocking components of the playbook itself, and distinguish between normal political jockeying and genuine authoritarian moves. This briefing is designed to help journalists do just that.

The analytic framework for authoritarianism is this:

Since the MSM fails to do this way too

often, we have to do it for ourselves

Perplexity summarizes the 7 main tactics the Authoritarian Playbook describes:

Weaponizing Fear: Authoritarian leaders embrace a language of violence, promote a punitive culture, and leverage military might domestically. They aim to make critics believe they'll face harm for opposing the regime.

Targeting Outsiders: They stoke xenophobia by demonizing immigrants and foreigners, blaming domestic problems on these scapegoats, and portraying political opponents as sympathetic to these perceived enemies.

Undermining Institutions: This involves taking over courts, eliminating checks and balances, undoing established treaties and legislation that limit executive power, and weakening protections for free and fair elections.

Rewriting History: Authoritarian leaders exert control over schools and media to indoctrinate the public with beliefs that reinforce their power.

Exploiting Religion: They appeal to the religious majority while targeting minorities, often conflating national identity with religious identity.

Dividing and Conquering: Using hate speech and encouraging violent actors to widen social rifts, they manufacture crises to seize more power.

Eroding Truth: They attack the press as an "enemy of the people," dismiss negative reports as "fake news," counter legitimate information with disinformation, and overwhelm the media landscape with endless scandals and contradictions.

Additional Tactics

• Politicizing Independent Institutions: Authoritarians attack and seek to capture institutions that typically operate independently from partisan politics, such as law enforcement and central banking.

• Aggrandizing Executive Power: They work to weaken legislatures, courts, and other institutions designed to provide checks and balances, often justifying this expansion of power through cults of personality.

• Corrupting Elections: While maintaining the facade of elections, they tilt rules against opponents, suppress votes, and may even overturn results.

• Stoking Violence: Many authoritarians deliberately inflame violence to create fear, division, and feelings of insecurity.

By employing these tactics, authoritarian leaders aim to consolidate their power, suppress opposition, and erode democratic norms and institutions. These tactics are often employed gradually and in combination, making them difficult to distinguish from normal political maneuvering. The playbook emphasizes that modern authoritarians frequently come to power through seemingly democratic means before slowly eroding democratic norms and institutions

A 9:16 video about the authoritarian playbook.